Anna's poem, Esposito & Son, in The New Yorker (November 28 issue)
Anna Scotti Wins 20th Annual Fischer Prize
The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program announced that North Hollywood poet Anna Scotti’s “Tanager” has won the Fischer Prize.
“Here is a prose poem that works beautifully, which is rare,” said judge Chris Ransick, former Denver Poet Laureate currently living on the Oregon Coast. “The poet has eschewed one key tool -- the line break -- and in place of that wielded precise imagery, musicality, insistent rhythm, surprise, and delight.”
And in naming Scotti’s piece the winner, Ransick added, “The poem is deceptively complex, unfolding the narrative backward as the poem moves forward and doing what is perhaps most difficult in any poem: expertly plying the thin edge of just enough information so that the poem opens through its subtle movements. The speaker’s voice is confident, compassionate, angry, elegant . . . so complex in tone yet utterly clear and in control of its instrument.”
Ransick noted that “all of the finalists’ poems were excellent; this is the one I wanted to read again and again, and after each reading, to pause in the glow it left.”
“Here is a prose poem that works beautifully, which is rare,” said judge Chris Ransick, former Denver Poet Laureate currently living on the Oregon Coast. “The poet has eschewed one key tool -- the line break -- and in place of that wielded precise imagery, musicality, insistent rhythm, surprise, and delight.”
And in naming Scotti’s piece the winner, Ransick added, “The poem is deceptively complex, unfolding the narrative backward as the poem moves forward and doing what is perhaps most difficult in any poem: expertly plying the thin edge of just enough information so that the poem opens through its subtle movements. The speaker’s voice is confident, compassionate, angry, elegant . . . so complex in tone yet utterly clear and in control of its instrument.”
Ransick noted that “all of the finalists’ poems were excellent; this is the one I wanted to read again and again, and after each reading, to pause in the glow it left.”
All material on this site is copyright protected and is the property of the author. To request permission to use or permission to reprint, please send me an email using the pull down menu.
